LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Fans of "The Wizard of Oz" will be able to see those ruby red slippers and the iconic Yellow Brick Road in 3D and in IMAX, Warner Bros. said Tuesday.

Seventy five years after Dorothy crash-landed in Munchkinland, the 1939 film classic will be re-mastered and released in U.S. theaters for a special one-week engagement on September 20, 2013.

"The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved films of all time and we are thrilled that our longtime partners at Warner Bros. have made IMAX a part of this exciting milestone event," Greg Foster, chairman and president of IMAX, said in a statement. "This film revolutionized the use of color and special effects in cinema, and we're excited to add another 'first' - bringing this timeless classic to moviegoers through the power of the IMAX 3D Experience for the very first time."

The film has grown in the estimation of movie-lovers and critics since it first debuted in theaters. Reviews were strong, but initially the movie failed to recoup its production budget, grossing slightly more than $3 million, but costing $2 million to produce.

It's been a big year for all things Oz, with Walt Disney Studios releasing a prequel to the adventure, "Oz the Great and Powerful" last spring.

Following the IMAX release, Warner Bros. will release a five-disc anniversary collector's edition of "The Wizard of Oz" that will feature a 3D copy a making-of documentary, bonus features and various collectibles, such as ruby slippers and a map of Oz.

That edition will cost $105.43, but there will also be cheaper Blu-ray and DVD options for between $16.95 and $35.99.

Seventeen poachers armed with Kalashnikov riflesin the Central African Republic earlier this week, representatives from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a statement. The poachers made their way to the Dzanga Bai, an open area where anywhere from 50 to 200 elephants gather daily to drink nutrients and mineral salts in the sands.

At least 26 elephant carcasses, including four calves, were counted in and around the Dzanga Bai on Thursday (May 9), WWF officials said. All had had their tusks removed, Jules Caron, head of communications for the WWF's anti-poaching program in Central Africa, confirmed to LiveScience.

Wildlife representatives described the Dzanga Bai scene as an "elephant mortuary," and it was evident that local villagers had started taking meat from the remains of the dead animals, they added. []

"The killing has started," Jim Leape, WWF's international director general, said in a statement. "The Central African Republic must act immediately to secure this unique [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] World Heritage site. The brutal violence we are witnessing in Dzanga Bai threatens to destroy one of the world's great natural treasures, and to jeopardize the future of the people who live there."

Poachers continue to kill elephants and strip them of their ivory tusks to sell on global markets, despite a ban onthat was instituted in Africa in 1989. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, some 25,000 African elephants are killed every year.

"The elephants here face a sure death as , which fuels even more violence in [the Central African Republic]," Cristin Samper, the Wildlife Conservation Society's president and CEO, said in a statement. "On my recent visit to Dzanga Bai, I stood in awestruck silence as I watched hundreds of elephants gathering in this incredible area. WCS stands with our conservation partner WWF calling for immediate action to stop the killing of these elephants."

The Dzanga Bai area is known to locals as the "village of elephants," because of the herds of elephants that assemble there every day. Because the poachers raided the sanctuary, however, nohave been seen at the Bai, WWF officials said.

The Central African Republic has been a hotbed of violence and political instability since the beginning of the year. In April, the WWF and other conservation organizations were forced to leave their field offices next to the Dzanga Bai due to security concerns, agency officials said.

"The international community must also act to assist the Central African Republic to restore peace and order in this country to safeguard its population and its natural heritage," Leape said. "WWF also asks Cameroon and the Republic of [the] Congo to assist the Central African Republic in preserving this World Heritage Site, which not only encompasses the Bai, but also includes large neighboring areas of these two countries."

The WWF fears poachers in the region will take advantage of the Central African Republic's political turmoil for their gains. The 17 individuals who raided the Dzanga Bai this week presented themselves as part of the country's transitional-government forces. They have since left the sanctuary, but WWF officials are concerned that poaching will continue unless the area is secured.

"The events in Dzanga Bai are a vivid reminder of thein Central Africa," Leape said. "Populations of this species have plummeted 62 percent over the past 10 years. The unfolding tragedy in Dzanga Bai must also spur the governments of China and Thailand to act on their commitments to shut down the ivory markets in their countries that are fueling this illicit trade."

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter . Follow LiveScience , & . Original article on.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The most anticipated IPO since Facebook has attracted lawyers, bankers and potential investors, showering China's Alibaba with attention ahead of a stock offering that some say could exceed $15 billion (9 billion pounds).

And in what has become standard practice for large Chinese transactions, Wall Street CEOs have dropped-by to say hello to Alibaba founder and Chairman Jack Ma over the past few weeks.

J.P. Morgan CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon met with Ma during a China trip this week, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The two shook hands during the brief encounter, a second source said.

Last month Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat met Ma as part of an Asia-wide trip, according to person familiar with the matter.

Top bankers are being flown in from New York and other banking headquarters, banking sources say, to get in front of Ma and his management team as the company prepares for a long-awaited public offering.

At stake for the banks are tens of millions of dollars in fees if they are chosen as an underwriter, plus the bragging rights to having worked on one of the largest internet listings.

China's e-commerce giant has yet to officially acknowledge the IPO plans or outline a timetable for the deal, though Ma himself has dropped several public hints that it's coming.

Hedge fund manager Carl Huttenlocher, founder of Myriad Asset Management Ltd, estimates Alibaba could command a valuation of $150-200 billion by the second half of 2014.

Huttenlocher, who spoke at the inaugural Karen Leung Memorial Investor Conference in Hong Kong on Thursday, said he based the figure on an analysis of estimated profits and growth of China's e-commerce market.

Alibaba has yet to formally name its roster of underwriters, though banks are jockeying for position.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Credit Suisse is expected to earn a leading role in the IPO.

Citigroup and J.P. Morgan declined to comment.

"As a matter of policy we don't comment on the meeting schedules of our executives," Alibaba spokesman John Spelich said.

PULLING OUT ALL THE STOPS

Sending top executives to deal pitches, especially in Asia, is meant to underscore the bank's commitment to the offering.

Unlike other parts of the world, the Asia business culture holds title in very high esteem.

One Asia banker who spoke to Reuters said she knows of a deal - an IPO worth several hundred million dollars - whereby the company refused to offer an underwriter a mandate because the bank sent a sub-regional head to a deal-pitch rather than the top executive for the region.

Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson made several trips to China ahead of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's $19 billion IPO in 2006, according to media reports at the time.

Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack and CEO James Gorman flew to Beijing to pitch for Agricultural Bank of China Ltd's $22.1 billion IPO in 2010, media reports at the time said.

While meeting a Chinese entrepreneur this time around is different from the bureaucratic stops in Beijing, both types of meetings are meant to ensure a trusted, lucrative relationship.

Alibaba's IPO could send around $260 million in collective fees to banks, Reuters Breakingviews reported last month.

(Additional reporting by Elzio Barreto and Vikram Subhedar; Editing by Michael Flaherty and Jeremy Laurence)

"They agreed that North Korea has to denuclearize, that neither country will accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and that we would work together to deepen cooperation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization," Thomas Donilon told reporters after two days of informal talks in California.

Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi told a separate news conference that Xi had told Obama that China and the United States were "the same in their positions and objectives" on the North Korean nuclear issue.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Leading the U.S. delegation to the annual general assembly of the OAS an organization he has disparaged as ineffective, inefficient and nearly irrelevant Kerry will try to convince fellow members of the need for major changes in its bureaucracy and a return to its core mission of promoting human rights, democracy and development.

Officials traveling with Kerry said he also would be making the case against legalization of marijuana at the national level, lobbying for the election of the U.S. candidate for a hemispheric human rights panel and trying to improve badly damaged relations with Venezuela.

Kerry arrived Tuesday in the Guatemalan capital for the meeting, which is taking place in the mountain resort of Antigua.

The OAS often is criticized in the United States and Kerry wrote a scathing editorial about its failures and need to reform three years ago while he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He then introduced legislation in Congress aimed at requiring significant budget reforms in the organization.

Just last year, shortly before he was nominated to be secretary of state, Kerry penned a letter to the OAS permanent council with three other senators bemoaning that the group "has been forfeiting its effectiveness" with a lack of strategic focus and fiscal recklessness.

The State Department said Monday that Kerry believed the bloc was an organization of critical importance to the Americas and that his participation in the two-day meeting in Guatemala was aimed at helping to strengthen it.

"The fact that he is going to the OAS and he is spending two days there participating sends a clear signal that he thinks this remains the premier multilateral organization in the hemisphere," department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

"In order to assure that the OAS retains that status, it must refocus on its core principles," she said, stressing democracy, human rights, development and regional security. "Strengthening it is of course part of (Kerry's) agenda and part of what he'll be focused on in the next couple of days."

As a senator in 2010, Kerry made similar, though not as subtle, points in an opinion piece he co-wrote with Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., his successor as head of the Foreign Relations Committee.

"Sadly, its culture of consensus has often been the breeding ground of the ideas that reflect the lowest common denominator, rather than the highest ambitions of diplomacy and cooperation," they wrote in The Miami Herald.

The pair excoriated the OAS for becoming "a pliable tool of inconsistent political agendas" and suggested that they agreed with critics who called the organization "a grazing pasture for third-string diplomats."

Psaki played down the last comment, saying she "would hardly call the secretary of state a third-string diplomat." Kerry's mere presence at the meeting demonstrates his and the Obama administration's commitment to improving the OAS, she said.

In November 2012, Kerry and Menendez, along with Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote that OAS finances had become dangerously precarious and that it must reform, pare back superfluous projects or risk losing support from its prime contributor, the United States.

The United States has over the past decades found itself at growing odds with numerous Latin and South American members of the OAS. Many of them, like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador, are led by leftist or populist leaders who have balked at accepting the dominance of the U.S. in the Americas and pursued policies that often run counter to Washington's wishes.

Apart from Cuba, which has been suspended from the OAS for decades, the U.S. has most differences with Venezuela, whose former president, Hugo Chavez, reveled in tweaking Washington until his death last year.

Kerry was to meet Wednesday with Venezuela's new foreign minister to discuss possibilities for improving relations, a U.S. official said.

Kerry was expected to raise human rights and democracy concerns in the country, where the opposition was still disputing the narrow results of the election that brought Chavez's successor to power.

Since becoming the top U.S. diplomat in February, Kerry already has traveled more than 100,000 miles to visit 23 countries, but the trip to Guatemala was his first in the Western Hemisphere.

Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, the central figure in the trial, was given a one-year prison term for endangering public health on Tuesday.

The case attracted international attention because of the high-profile of some of his clients in Spain and beyond and his claim early in the trial that he treated a host of athletes in sports other than cycling.

However, the judge prompted widespread disbelief and condemnation when she also ordered the evidence, including code-named bags of blood, to be destroyed, rejecting a request for access from anti-doping authorities and dashing hopes that others involved in illegal activity could be identified.

She justified her decision by saying that evidence collected in a criminal investigation could not then be used in an administrative process such as a doping probe by a sporting body as it would infringe the rights of those implicated.

Spain's anti-doping agency (AEA) has said it will appeal, raising the prospect of the case, which has already lasted more than seven years since the initial police raids, dragging on towards September when the decision on the 2020 Games is due.

"The bid will be affected by both the good and the bad but we cannot be made responsible now for Operation Puerto," Blanco, who is also the president of Spain's Olympic Committee (COE), said in an interview with As sports daily published on Friday.

"We cannot correct the past but we can the future and that is our concrete commitment, nobody can doubt that," he added.

"The problem is that Operation Puerto has been a mistake and a disaster for Spanish sport from the start.

"The legal process has a timescale that is not the same as that in sport, where you have to decide things immediately.

"Now there will be appeals and the case will continue to drag on. It has been seven years already and that's a whole career for many athletes."

OTHER SPORTS

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) also voiced its disappointment with the judge's decision to destroy the evidence and said it is considering an appeal.

WADA, the AEA, the Spanish cycling federation (RFEC), the International Cycling Union (UCI) and the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) were all represented in the three-month trial in Madrid.

Fuentes, who denied doping, said in his opening testimony that he had clients in cycling but also in sports including soccer, tennis, athletics and boxing.

He offered to name them in court but the judge ruled that would have infringed the rights of those implicated.

"The verdict does not help the country's image," secretary of state for sport Miguel Cardenal told As on Friday.

"We will continue to devote all our efforts to find out these names and we will continue to explain that the outcome of a trial is one thing and another is our commitment as a nation," he added.

"They need to see that we are in the same boat in the fight against doping and that we feel the same frustration and the same disappointment."

Spanish tennis player Rafa Nadal, the world number five, added his voice to the criticism of the verdict on Friday, saying "the only people who benefited were the cheats".

"With something that damages the image of sport so severely, the ones who are affected are us the Spanish athletes and sport in general," he told a promotional event in Madrid.

"I think the best thing that could happen is that we stop talking about the issue."

Madrid is competing with Istanbul and Tokyo for the 2020 Games and International Olympic Committee (IOC) members are due to vote on the bids at a meeting in Buenos Aires in September.

(Reporting by Iain Rogers, editing by Martyn Herman)

In 2011, the once energetic toddler was diagnosed and hospitalized with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis. At one point, she was taking eight daily medications. She was so afraid of the frequent steroid injections that she had to be put under anesthesia to keep her still enough for the procedure.

"In the beginning when there were all those unknowns, we knew we had to get to the bottom of it," said her mother, Kim Pruden, a 35-year-old speech pathologist from Phoenix.

"But at the same time, we had to keep that poker face with her to give her the confidence that, 'You are O.K. and you are going to be O.K.'"

The couple has their "breakdown" moments after Campbell goes to bed at night.

One of the greatest misunderstandings about arthritis is that it affects only adults. More than 300,000 children in the United States are living with the disease, according to the , which has launched a new public awareness campaign to debunk the myths of arthritis during the month of May.

In addition to swelling in the joints, children can suffer muscle and soft tissue tightening and bone erosion that affect growth patterns.

Symptoms may include a non-contagious fever and rash. Inflammation can affect the spleen or the membranes that covering the lungs and heart.

It's important to recognize the symptoms of arthritis early, as many forms of arthritis can cause irreversible joint damage, often within the first two years of the disease. There are more than 100 types of arthritis and knowing what type you have makes a difference in how it is treated.

Today, at age 3, Campbell gets intravenous injections of powerful immune-suppressant medicines known as biologics, but office visits can last anywhere from two to five hours long. She calls the tiresome procedures her "stupid tubes."

Pruden laughs that the ordeal is like "going to Disney World for kids to get poked with needles."

Pruden and her husband John take a positive approach with their daughter whose joints are always aching.

"We keep her moving, we keep her active and we take one day at a time," she said. "When she is not feeling well, we respect that, but it's important not to make that a crutch or an excuse."

Arthritis is an umbrella term used to describe the many autoimmune and inflammatory conditions.

One family hard-hit by the disease recently moved from rainy Seattle to Charleston, S.C., for the warm climate, which is easier on the aching joints of sufferers.

Sisters Amelia, 5, and Liberty, 3, have juvenile idiopathic arthritis, which affects their joints "from head to toe," according to their mother, Lisa Schultz, who was recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Their father has had gout since he was 20, which is also a form of arthritis.

Amelia was diagnosed in April 2010 when she was nearly 2. She suddenly stopped walking and reverted to crawling.

"She started limping in the morning and wanted to be carried," said Schultz, 37 and a stay-at-home mother. "She would cry when I changed her diaper, too. I would lift her up and she would say her toes hurt when I put on her socks. Her second toe was almost the size of her big toe and her knees were the size of oranges."

Saeed Jalili, familiar to outsiders because of his prominence as a nuclear negotiator, has tried to distance himself from outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out with the clerical leadership that controls Iran. But he is employing the same strategy that worked for Ahmadinejad eight years ago and in the murky world of Iranian politics, where there are no credible polls and elections are a highly controlled affair, it has made him, for many, the presumed front-runner.

"No compromise! No submission!" shouted supporters at rallies this week that had men in front and women segregated in the back.

Perhaps more than any of the other seven candidates allowed to run by the clerics, Jalili presents a riddle: A negotiator who seems to dislike give-and-take; an opponent of international outreach who nonetheless noted in a 2006 interview that Iran's "big question" is whether it can ever restore relations with Washington.

The answer, judging by his statements ahead of the June 14 vote, may be: Not necessarily.

"I'm opposed to detente," he declared at one campaign stop. "The principle for us is to counter threats not rapprochement. We have to implement the discourse of resistance in society."

In an attempt to showcase his piety, Jalili traveled to the seminary city of Qom, where he respectfully adjusted a microphone Wednesday for Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, once considered the spiritual mentor of Ahmadinejad. A day later, he told a women's gathering to shun Western ways and embrace motherhood as their "core identity."

Iran has no credible voter polling to handicap the candidates, but there is a sense of momentum behind Jalili. He is clearly popular with the ruling clerics who hand-pick the ballot list and faced widespread accusations of vote rigging four years ago to keep Ahmadinejad in power.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claims to remain neutral, yet has repeated similar messages that reject any major concessions on Iran's nuclear ambition or support for key regional allies including Syria's Bashar Assad and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. The powerful Ayatollah Yazdi a member of the Assembly of Experts, the only group capable of ousting the supreme leader backs Jalili as well.

Among the public, Jalili is admired as a "living martyr" for losing part of his right leg in the 1980s war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, then backed by the United States, which left him with a noticeable limp that lends enormous status.

The 47-year-old Jalili who looks older with his white hair and beard was the clerics' trusted point man during years of fruitless nuclear negotiations. While the clerics not the president set major policies such as foreign relations and nuclear, a Jalili presidency would align with an unyielding approach in possible nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers after the election. Four rounds since last year have made almost no headway.

The West believes Iran is seeking to develop atomic weapons, although Tehran denies that.

The establishment-friendly slate suggests the regime used its candidate-vetting powers to ensure a comfortable outcome rather than risk allowing reformists to regroup under former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was stunningly cut from the race by election overseers.

"This election is all about the regime looking for security and predictability," said Sami al-Faraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "It's about no surprises."

For outsiders, one surprise might be that at this point with inconvenient candidates removed there is something of a real campaign underway, with the outcome far from certain. There is the possibility of rival candidates uniting, or moderates creating some reformist momentum by backing someone.

"Much will depend on candidates dropping off and making alliances rather than all of them battling on their own for votes," said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of the Middle East Studies program at Syracuse University.

The Iranian presidency's main mandate is shepherding the domestic economy, which has been battered by a combination of Ahmadinejad's free-spending and international sanctions over Tehran's nuclear program. This could become a weak spot for Jalili, a former diplomat and adviser who has never held elected office or dealt with a budget.

"He talks in vacuum. He speaks about dreams rather than real issues. He vaguely talks of resistance, but has nothing to offer about high inflation and Iran's international isolation," said Tehran-based political analyst Sadeq Zibakalam. "Jalili is a new version of Ahmadinejad. You only need to cut Ahmadinejad's words in 2005 and paste them into Jalili's speeches."

It's a curious strategy, considering that Ahmadinejad is exiting as an outcast: he became unpopular with the clerics after his failed attempt to challenge the near-absolute authority of Khamenei.

Most candidates have avoided Ahmadinejad-style bombast on the assumption that Iranians are more interested in saving the economy than ideological battles with the West. But Jalili is betting otherwise, adopting the firebrand part of Ahmadinejad's legacy while leaving out the disruptive power struggles.

"We believe Iran's position during (Ahmadinejad's) era was strengthened," said a leaflet distributed by Jalili's campaign office. "The poor and deprived masses were given attention, revolutionary values saw growth . Yet there were weaknesses that we won't neglect."

A product of the theocracy's grooming process, Jalili became a senior policy adviser in Khamenei's office in 2001 after a decade as a university lecturer, often discussing his doctoral thesis that explored foreign policy and Islamic values. He later was deputy foreign minister for European and American Affairs and was named Iran's lead nuclear negotiator in 2007.

Despite his uncompromising style, he broke form famously in 2009 for a lunchtime chat at a Swiss villa with then-U.S. Under Secretary of State William Burns the first publicly acknowledged face-to-face meeting between Iranian and American envoys since relations were severed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"Shouldn't the country's top nuclear negotiator concentrate on his responsibilities rather than run for president?" said a commentary by the conservative news website, alef.ir, which speculated that Iran's position at talks could be weakened if Jalili is elected and a new team is put in place.

A possible game changer would be a three-candidate pact between Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Khamenei, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher and parliamentarian Gholam Ali Haddad Adel. Each has promised to give key posts to the others should he win, and a joint bid could be strong.

Two former presidents seen as relative moderates Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami also hold important cards. They could make an all-out push behind one of the two longshot reform-leaning candidates, mostly likely former nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani.

Either way, few expect a repeat of 2009, when claims of election-rigging sparked mass protests that were brutally put down by police and paramilitary groups. The opposition says more than 80 demonstrators were killed, while the government puts the number at 30. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have been the real victor in the 2009 vote, is still under house arrest. And years of relentless arrests and pressures have left opposition groups dispirited and in disarray.

___

Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women can be reassured that cleaning with a bidet after using the toilet will not throw off their vaginal bacteria balance or increase the risk their baby will be born early, a new study suggests.

One cause of premature birth is inflammation around the fetus, which can stem from a vaginal infection. Researchers have been unsure whether various forms of genital washing, including bidet use and douching, might clear out healthy bacteria and increase the risk of vaginosis, or vaginal bacterial infections.

The new findings are "reassuring," according to Dr. John Thorp, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied prevention of premature birth.

"This is an important study given the common practice of bidet use outside the U.S. and the potential harms (that) alterations in the vaginal microflora might have on the risk of preterm birth," Thorp, who was not involved in the new research, told Reuters Health in an email.

In Japan, according to the study authors, 72 percent of households have electric bidets installed. Modern models are typically incorporated into standard toilets, rather than separate fixtures.

For the new study, the researchers led by Dr. Keiko Asakura from the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo surveyed 1,300 women who had a baby between 2006 and 2010 about their past bidet use. About 63 percent of them reported using a bidet shortly before and during pregnancy.

Regardless of whether they had used a bidet, 16 percent of women gave birth prematurely - defined as before 37 weeks. That proportion is higher than average, the researchers noted, because their hospital is known for treating infertility and pregnancy problems.

A similar proportion of bidet and non-bidet users - 20.3 percent and 20.7 percent, respectively - also tested positive for bacterial vaginosis, according to samples taken at their prenatal exams, the study team wrote in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Thorp said women and their doctors now have evidence that can help them make decisions about bidet use in pregnancy. Some of his own work has tied douching before pregnancy to a higher risk of premature birth - but douching may be more internal than bidet baths, he noted.

Asakura's team said it would be useful going forward to see if bidet use does affect outcomes for women with compromised immune systems, for example.

But for now, the researchers wrote, it seems safe.

"Normal use of the bidet toilet by pregnant women poses no clinical health risk for preterm birth and bacterial vaginosis," they concluded.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/18ynh0i Obstetrics & Gynecology, online May 8, 2013.

Vance passed away at his Oakland, California, home on Sunday, according to the statement at www.jackvance.com, a site maintained by his friends and family.

He won the Hugo award for his science fiction book "The Dragon Masters" in 1963 and again in 1967 for "The Last Castle." The Hugo is given for excellence in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

"The Dragon Masters" features medieval-style combat and describes humans who war with aliens, even as they rely on certain lizard-like aliens they took captive.

"The Last Castle" takes place on a fictional planet Earth where humans live like aristocrats in high-tech redoubts while aliens attend their needs, until a race of those aliens stages a violent revolt.

Vance, who wrote over 60 books, also authored mystery novels under his full name, John Holbrook Vance, and three titles under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, according to his website.

In 1974, the movie "Bad Ronald," which was based on a story by Vance about a teenager who accidentally kills a girl and conspires with his mother to hide in their house, was broadcast on television.

Pulitzer-prize winning author Michael Chabon in a 2009 New York Times magazine article about Vance called him "the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don't get the credit they deserve."

Vance was born in San Francisco and was raised on his maternal grandparents ranch in Northern California after his parents separated. After college, he worked at a naval shipyard in Hawaii but left shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, according to his website.

He later served in the U.S. Merchant Marine and saw some of his earliest work published in pulp magazines.

A lifelong lover of music, Vance played the cornet, ukulele and harmonica and had an affection for jazz music.

He was legally blind since the 1980s but continued to write with the help of special computer software.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Paul Simao)